United States Population

When Hyundai Motor America learned that its Elantra and Accent models were striking a chord with nurses, the car company turned to Census Bureau data to shape advertising that would reach the largely female profession. Hyundai now is anxiously awaiting the release of detailed income, education and occupation data from the 2000 census, with an eye toward honing that specialized pitch.

A new census study of America's Latinos dramatizes the pivotal role that people of Mexican ancestry are playing in reshaping the nation's demographic makeup. People of Mexican lineage, who two decades ago were largely confined to the Southwest, California and Chicago, are now settling around the country and gaining ground in numbers on such long-established groups as German Americans and Irish Americans, mostly the offspring of earlier waves of immigration. Mexicans accounted for 58.

The U.S. Census Bureau did not record a single Miccosukee on the tribe's reservation in its 2000 count, although hundreds of American Indians live on or near the land in the Everglades. Many are Miccosukees, but Indians from other tribes also live on or near the reservation. Miccosukee Chairman Billy Cypress did not return a phone call for comment Friday.

For the first time in a century, every state gained in population as the nation added a record 32.7 million people during the 1990s, the Census Bureau reported Monday. Although growth was universal, the West set the pace, expanding by 19%, and adding 10.4 million people, according to a Census Bureau review of the just-completed release of population figures for all 50 states.

The U.S. Census has just discovered what lifeguard Dave Yester has known for years: Hawaii is the most ethnically and racially mixed state in the United States and becoming more so. "Visitors become friends, friends become lovers and everybody becomes Hawaiian," said Yester, overlooking a diverse group of sun worshipers on this famed surfing beach on Oahu's North Shore. "It's the Hawaiian way." Just-released figures from the 2000 census show that 21% of Hawaii's 1.

Southern California's long-predicted new ethnic order became reality in the 1990s, as Latinos ascended to dominance in Los Angeles and nonwhites came to outnumber whites regionwide by more than 3 million, census data released Thursday showed. As the millennium dawned, the combined population of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Riverside counties hit 16,373,645--surpassing the statewide total in 1960 and topping all other states in 2000 except Texas and New York.

The census failed to count 529,782 Californians last year, an estimated 1.5% of the state's population, Democratic members of the Census Monitoring Board said Wednesday. The proportion of the people overlooked in the census is higher in states with large minority populations, according to the report by Democrats. The government is using the original census tally as the official figure for the number of people living in the country last April 1--281,421,906, to be exact.

With the release this month of the 2000 census' first trickle of data, sociologists, politicians and demographers began a predictably highbrow debate on the shape of American society. But far removed from the Beltway and the ivory towers, a cadre of Wall Street analysts is eagerly mining the same information for nuggets that will help them lead their clients to riches--or, at least, sound investments. To them, the nation's booming Latino population makes Spanish-language media stocks a good buy.

Nearly one in every three Americans is a member of a minority group, reflecting a massive surge in immigration during the 1990s, the Census Bureau reported Monday. "The change in diversity will be our big story," said John Long, chief of the Census Bureau population division, as his agency announced its overview of race and ethnicity--a report highlighted by a surge in the nation's Asian population. Census Bureau figures show the total population of Asians jumped to a range of 10.

As the U.S. economy of the 1990s grew from sour to sizzling hot, economists kept scratching their heads over several big questions. How were companies finding enough new employees to keep business booming? And if companies were fighting for workers, how come Americans were not getting big pay raises?